


The Things We Tell Ourselves

by vials



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Past Relationship(s), and finally some betrayal, gratuitous amounts of regret, some resentment too, this is really angsty I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7737448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James thought he would have learned his lesson by now -- that even the people you love are often hiding terrible secrets. He always told himself that if it happened again, he'd do things differently; that he would be colder, that he wouldn't be surprised, that he wouldn't care. Unfortunately, that isn't what happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things We Tell Ourselves

He’d known him, once.

James didn’t know if he could still say that, because how could he claim to know anyone when such huge parts of them had been hidden from him? Hidden so well, too – he had never expected it, never had the thought so much as cross his mind. But of course he would never have suspected anything. Silva had always known exactly the kinds of things James would be looking for, and he had kept them hidden from view. James had thought he had been going mad, tied to that chair and watching Silva walk towards him, because how could it have possibly been the same man? For his part, Silva hadn’t made any mention of their past together. He had left James staring at him, trying to work it out, entertaining all kinds of absurd ideas in an attempt to piece together the man he had known.

It had left a bitter taste in James’ mouth, to say the least. When he had thrown that knife at Silva’s back it hadn’t been entirely to do with M, and the symbolism hadn’t been lost on him. It was a risk of the job, really – to have someone get close to you for what you knew, to find out that people weren’t who they said they were – but James was used to being the one to pull those tricks on people. He wasn’t used to being on the receiving end, despite how often he tried to tell himself otherwise. He could say business was business all he liked, but somehow the words had less meaning once months and years came into the equation. Once he had been sure that what he was seeing was the real person. Perhaps he was just angry that he had been fooled. It was easier to pretend to be humiliated than it was to admit that he had been hurt.

So he pretended, too, that he hadn’t remembered anything, that all those days and nights they had shared when their locations overlapped had never happened, that nothing they had ever said to one another had meant anything. He pretended just as well as he hoped Silva was pretending, and he had brought him back to London and then lured him up to Scotland and finally he had condensed all that pretending into one tiny point and thrown it full force into Silva’s back, and he was even proud of himself for getting a final dig in at the man rather than breaking the rules of whatever game they had been playing. If the little smile Silva had given him before he collapsed dead at his feet had meant anything, James didn’t think about it – he had been too busy with M, realising that it had all been useless after all. He had lost both of them, and kneeling there on the hard stone, he wondered why he even regarded Silva as a loss. He hadn’t known him. Could he really lose someone he didn’t know?

He cried over M because he was allowed to cry over her, and then when he finally couldn’t cry any longer he let his thoughts turn back to Silva, because it was safe to think about him when he couldn’t cry. He set M down on the floor and it felt so wrong to leave her there but it wasn’t as though there was anything he could do about that, and besides, she was dead and James could clearly imagine the kinds of things she would say to him about the wholly unnecessary tradition of fussing over a corpse. He went back to Silva’s body because there was something symbolic about that knife and he would rather keep it than have it go god knows where with Silva, and as he reached down to wrench the damn thing out of the man’s back he heard him groan.

_‘Life clung to me like a disease’. You bloody bastard._

James told himself he was going to pull the knife out anyway and replace it in a more fatal spot, but he did neither. He told himself he would at least walk away, pretend he didn’t hear it, but again, he did neither. Instead he knelt down beside the man, his knees aching, and he reached out a hand that might have been trembling and pushed some of his hair out of the way. Silva’s eyes were open, and James wondered for a moment if he might be dead after all, but then he blinked.

“You really can’t just die, can you?” James asked.

Silva moved his eyes up to look at him, his gaze unfocused, and it took everything in James’ power to keep looking back at him. He didn’t know if the man could talk. He didn’t know if he wanted him to.

“It would be your best option at this point,” James told him, and he tried to keep his voice cold but something didn’t sound right. “It’s either that or rotting in a prison cell for the rest of your life, and I don’t think you’d like that. I would finish the job myself, but—” _I can’t._ “—quite frankly, that would be more than you’d deserve.”

“You hurt me,” Silva said, his voice barely a croak, and there was only the slightest trace of that teasing tone James had grown so accustomed to. “Such a cruel thing to say.”

“She’s dead,” James said harshly, and he saw Silva wince at the words. “You got what you wanted. Why should you get the rest of it?”

Silva closed his eyes for a long moment, long enough that James wondered if he’d lost consciousness, or if he really had died this time, and he tried not to think about why that made his stomach twist so unpleasantly. He was telling himself he wouldn’t check when Silva opened his eyes again, and this time they were damp, and James wanted nothing more than the strength to walk away.

“It’s a shame it came to this,” Silva said quietly, and James could see blood on his teeth. “You were…”

“Don’t.”

“You were unintended collateral damage.”

“You thought I would be useful to you. You’re not the first.”

“It wasn’t only that.”

“But it _was_ that.”

He told himself that was all that mattered – that at the root of it, Silva had been using him, and that it would be idiotic to try and apply any other meaning to all the time they had spent together. But James had never said anything, and he wondered how long Silva would have waited, would have tried for. He didn’t think he would have had this much patience.

But where did that leave him? Did it matter, now, if somewhere along the line it had become genuine? Did it really matter, when M was dead and Silva was dying and James would be alone, again, with nothing to show for it but more losses and the knowledge that loving him hadn’t been enough?

Silva coughed, and James could see there was more blood. The man’s breathing sounded laboured, wet around the edges, and as James dragged his eyes back to Silva’s face he saw he was already looking at him.

“Please,” Silva said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t leave.”

James told himself he would stand up, walk away out of sheer spite, keep his promise to give him nothing more of what he wanted, but he didn’t. He moved closer, pulling the man up into his lap, feeling the handle of the knife just at his knee. He told himself that was all he would do, but he didn’t. He held him, a hand threading through his hair, until the man’s eyes slipped closed and his chest stilled.

He told himself he wouldn’t cry, but he didn’t manage that, either.


End file.
